Robots' Arrival to Boost Chinese Asparagus Farmers
Intelligent robots that can harvest, transport, and sort the lucrative vegetable made their debut in Lianshui county last month.
In the flat, typhoon-prone fields of Lianshui county in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, a once-obscure vegetable has become a local economic engine. Greenhouses for growing asparagus now cover more than 1,333 hectares (3,294 acres), produce 50,000 tonnes (55,116 short tons) a year, and generate over 1 billion yuan (US$150 million) in value, according to local government data.
Lianshui accounts for about 30 per cent of China’s greenhouse-grown asparagus output, and much of the high-value white asparagus it produces ends up on plates in Japan, South Korea, and Europe – markets where local production is expensive and shrinking.